The flight from Edinburgh with a stopover in Amsterdam took about eighteen hours door to door. I was exhausted when I landed and I hadn't really factored that in. I spent my first afternoon in Tokyo lying on a very nice bed in a mild daze. It is a long way. Worth saying clearly because I think people underestimate it and then feel vaguely cheated when they arrive exhausted. Give yourself a recovery day at the start.
I stayed at Glamping Tokyo Asakusa, which I should clarify is not in a tent. The name is misleading and I did a double take when I first booked it. It's a hostel in Asakusa tucked down a back alley about three minutes from Senso-ji Temple. The rooms are genuinely lovely, warm lighting, smart design, a small fireplace feature on the wall that makes the whole space feel calmer than you'd expect for the price. They gave me a face mask on arrival which I did not expect and appreciated more than I should have after fourteen hours of travel. The front desk staff finished every conversation by asking if I needed local tips. Not in a scripted way. They pointed me towards a ramen spot around the corner with no English menu and about eight seats. It was one of the best things I ate all week.
Now. The toilets. I had heard about Japanese toilets before I went and still was not prepared. The one in my room had a control panel with eight buttons, a heated seat, and options I still can't explain. I spent a genuinely embarrassing amount of time on the first evening trying to work out how to flush it. The heated seat in October is, I will say, a revelation.
The metro took one afternoon to figure out and then it was completely fine. Get a Suica card at the airport, load it with cash, tap in and tap out. What surprised me more than the system itself was how quiet it was. Nobody talks on Tokyo's metro. No phone calls, music on headphones only, conversations in low murmurs at most. Coming from Edinburgh where someone on the 7am bus will tell their friend their entire week's drama at full volume, the silence was striking. I found it peaceful. Some people find it unsettling. Worth knowing before you go.
One thing nobody warned me about: there are almost no public bins in Tokyo. The city is spotlessly clean, which makes this even more confusing. You carry your rubbish with you until you find a convenience store bin, which is usually not very long but requires a mental adjustment from home where you'd just drop something in the nearest bin on the street. I walked around for two hours on my second day with an onigiri wrapper in my pocket.
Solo dining in Tokyo is not a thing you need to worry about. It is almost designed for it. I went to an Ichiran ramen one evening, a chain where you sit in an individual booth, order through a small paper form, and a wooden hatch opens with your food. You never see the person serving you. Some people find that strange. I found it completely perfect after four days of being relentlessly stimulated by a city I didn't fully understand yet. Just me, a bowl of ramen, and nowhere to be.
Senso-ji in Asakusa is five minutes from the hostel and I went twice. Once in the afternoon on my first day and once just after 6am on my third morning when it was almost empty. The lanterns were still lit, a few elderly locals were praying, and the whole complex had a stillness to it that the afternoon version absolutely does not have. Set the alarm.
The convenience stores deserve everything people say about them. The Lawson two minutes from the hostel became part of my daily routine. Onigiri for breakfast, canned coffee that was better than it had any right to be, hot food from the counter that cost about £2. The quality is genuinely good. I ate at least one meal a day from a convenience store and felt absolutely no shame about it.
The one thing that did catch me out was cash. Tokyo is more card-friendly than it used to be but plenty of smaller restaurants, particularly the good ones, are cash only. I nearly missed the ramen place the staff recommended because I had nothing on me. Get cash out at a 7-Eleven ATM when you arrive, they accept foreign cards reliably, and keep some on you.